With no obvious antecedents or precedents, we suddenly have a magnificent acoustic album from a songwriter/performer who (whisper, in case it throws a hex) has arrived fully formed as a serious artist at a high level.
Listen once, or with half an ear, and you'll miss it. So sit carefully and allow it in one song at a time. Don’t rush, don’t expect to get it first time. I'll talk you through the first 63 seconds and hope I don’t trample on the experience too much.
The opening guitar tune "Välkommen" was recorded by Kris Jönson in an old cinema called The Grand, in Uppsala. The closeness of a very sensitive mic and the deep ambience of the room absolutely demand high volume and very close attention. Keep yourself still and shut out the rest of the world. Start to listen.
There's a tentative upward semi-tone lilt on two strings, then a crash down on a rattling open bass string that reverberates for five seconds. It's long enough to hear the wood of the guitar body move in and out before a flutter of ascending notes drifts up into the distant ceiling. Beyond the ceiling there is a pale northern sunlight. There is a pause in the music and then a near-repeat of the first 16 tantalising seconds. The rasp of the windings on that bottom string is stronger this time. As the vibration is dying away, two more things happen. There's a tinkle of loose guitar string ends (can you hear how sharp they are?) and there is a low pulse on the edge of hearing. You might need to go back and listen again to catch it. A carpenter is somewhere on the roof of the Grand, hammering slowly, in unconscious sympathy with the music. The building is waking from its long sleep.
32 seconds have passed already and we're learning a lot about how to listen to this album. The seven note phrase sounds again, with a longer pure note over the top, singing out from the guitar, somewhere. This is repeated, slightly embellished, then two isolated treble notes, crisply played, with a breath of a pause inside the 63rd and final second, tumble straight onto track two. This is "Greenfly". It has a dancing, sunny bundle of finger picked guitar in ragtime mood, and we hear a perfect opening line. It seizes attention and it guides us gently on the big question of "what to expect from this artist"
He asks: "When did the colour from your cheeks up and leave?" We hadn't expected that.
Now we know that the album is not what it seemed. Look again at the happy forest picnic in Luke Drozd's alarming cover artwork. Entrails? Carnivorous squirrels? Headless birds in dead trees? A snap-tight man-size bear trap?
Listen again. The tunes, the lyrics and the accompaniments are minimal but precisely chosen for weight and psychological depth. In thinking of reference points to help summarise the next 36 minutes of the album I am at a loss. The lyrics are streams of lost, tragic consciousness that, if you chose to follow, will lead you deeper into your own forests of uncertainty and set off visual fantasies that might disturb or delight. Depending on the weather perhaps. Or on you own state of mind.
Musically everything is understated. Marshall's voice is restrained and a little plain (its intelligence and confident expressiveness defying any suggestion that it might be "dull"). But when an effect is used, or an instrument or a new note on a chord is added, we hold the lessons of the first seconds in our minds. These small shifts can have the deepest resonance. Elegant string parts are played by Åsa Magnusson and Jennifer Chubb (cello), a glockenspiel is struck by James Brown and additional vocals by Fran Rodgers are added economically and to very best effect. Listen carefully (you haven't forgotten to listen carefully, have you?) and you will also hear a mysterious orchestra of small sounds in other unexpected places.
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Each song is visually evocative and emotionally dense. Passing among them is like time spent in a deserted gallery, each image more compelling and unsettling than the last. The authority of Marshall's performance is reassurance in a difficult place.
The vultures (who invited vultures?) show up in track 6, "Knives in My Spine", a song of paranoia and the fear of being trapped in a world with designs on the soul. It has a lovely sweet tune holding the demons at bay: "Vultures can’t hold pens, still they write … but their gaze is like a knife turning in my spine" he sings. With a trembling ghostly chorus of female voices (done by Fran Rodgers) he cries "Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!".
The longest song, at just over six minutes, is "Spectres". It’s mournful, unhurried lightness could be MARK LINKOUS. Female voices and the lightest touches of electronic ambience hurry it sedately on.
A personal favourite is "Sea Full Of Trains". How much more emotionally evocative could trains, drowning and the ocean be? The song seems to hark back to adolescence on the North east coast near Whitby. A quietly chugging engine of guitar chords adds a subtle higher note that recurs as a theme of optimism within (but just off) the third beat of each bar. Intensity builds gradually and images flicker past, like perfectly realised GNER posters on deserted platforms. The strongest calls up a memory, dream, nightmare, premonition, of people spilling into the sea from a derailed train, trailing its carriages over a low cliff in a silent, frozen capsize. It happens over and over; a crescendo builds. Our hero becomes the disconnected official voice of denial. "No comment … no comment". It is a magnificent and peculiar song. Its disturbing secret is the tug of water, audibly and gently threatening at unexpected moments. Do listen carefully!
www. myspace.com/paulmarshallyeah
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